Ragaglia resigns state post

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)

Published 8:00 pm, Thursday, July 6, 2006

Ragaglia, 44, resigned Wednesday from her current job where she had been in charge of a Medicaid fraud unit since 2003. The resignation came as the state was to begin a hearing that could have led to her dismissal.

In May, the Department of Social Services hired a lawyer to investigate Ragaglia who acknowledged receiving many of the same gifts that toppled Gov. John G. Rowland's administration.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell stripped Ragaglia of her fraud oversight and ordered an investigation after The Associated Press reported on Ragaglia's secret grand jury testimony detailing her role in the Rowland scandal.

Ragaglia submitted a letter of resignation Wednesday afternoon, just as the Department of Social Services was about to convene a 3 p.m. hearing on her dismissal from her $104,000-a-year job.

"Please be advised that I am resigning effective in two weeks, at the close of business July 19, 2006. I am waiving my employment rights," Ragaglia said.

Secret grand jury transcripts, FBI reports and personal diaries examined by the AP showed that Ragaglia, while commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, helped steer a $57 million detention center contract to a contractor who had provided gifts to Rowland. All the while, according to the documents, she enjoyed many of the same luxury hotel rooms, limousine trips and dinners that prosecutors said were used to bribe other state officials.

Ragaglia, a former assistant attorney general, said she never knew that contractor William Tomasso was paying for the luxuries. She said she assumed they were being paid for by Lawrence Alibozek, a Rowland deputy with whom she said she had an extramarital affair.

Federal prosecutors agreed to not use Ragaglia's statements before a 2004 grand jury against her. Because Rowland, his aide Peter Ellef and contractor William Tomasso pleaded guilty and avoided trial, Ragaglia's testimony was never to be made public.